Anonymous posting is only appropriate when you are sharing sensitive information about clerkship applications and clerkship hiring. You may anonymously respond on topic to these threads. Unacceptable uses include: harassing another user, joking around, testing the feature, or other things that are more appropriate in the lounge.

It's called "Ask a Law Student / Graduate", and it's a place for 0Ls to ask current law students questions without disturbing the "Students and Graduates" forums. Post all your questions there, including about things like classes, grades, transferring, employment, etc. Please do not continue posting your questions here in the Students and Graduates forums, as doing so might get you banned and/or your thread locked.

If you are a 0L, then use caution before posting, if you argue or post blatantly inaccurate information you may be banned for trolling.

Thank you for your understanding.

Regulation of the Anonymous Post Feature:

The anonymous post feature is meant for serious, judicial clerkship-related questions that could reveal something about the poster to future employers. This can include information about grades, where a person has interviewed/received job offers, and other information that might identify them to future employers. The anonymous feature is not meant to be used as a shield for voicing unpopular opinions, demeaning others, sock puppetry, or otherwise being a jerk.

The anonymous post feature is meant to facilitate serious, judicial clerkship-related discussions. Anon serves two purposes: It allows users to safely disclose nonpublic information, and it allows users to share personal information that may tend to identify them. As used here, "nonpublic information" includes, e.g., information about judges' policies, hiring practices, personality, or management style***. "Personal information" that may tend to identify a poster includes, e.g., information about the poster's law school, grades or class rank, market, judge or court, clerkship year, clerkship interviews or offers, or post-clerkship interviews or offers.

Moderators afford considerable deference to posters' own determinations regarding whether anon use is appropriate for a given post. For example, one poster might be comfortable publicly identifying themselves as a former CoA clerk, whereas another poster in the same position might (validly) prefer to use anon.

However, moderators can and will "out" and "warn" posters who abuse their discretion in posting anonymously. Notably, posts that merely contain general advice or comments (e.g., "respect your JA," "ask your judge's former clerks instead of bugging your judge," etc.) do not qualify for anon. The anonymous feature is not meant to be used as a shield for voicing unpopular opinions, demeaning others, sock puppetry, or otherwise bad behavior.

If you see a comment that you believe is misuse or abuse of the anon feature, please report it using the Report button on the lower-right corner of each post. This button, which appears as a red exclamation point, allows you to flag a post for moderator investigation.

Moderators may announce when they have taken action against a poster, but this is only for transparency, not to invite debate about the anon policy. Do NOT post in the thread itself about whether or not something violates the anon abuse policy; this is considered thread derailment and may get you banned as well. There are other places you can do this, such as PM or an appropriate Lounge thread such as this one: http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/v ... 0&t=146657

Failure to follow any of these rules may result in being outed (even if your post contains sensitive information), and/or banned. The anon feature exists to foster on-topic discussion in this forum, not for repeated debate over the anon feature and the scope of its use. Please keep this in mind.

***TLS does not encourage or condone any disclosure of nonpublic information in violation of any applicable law or any valid contract, such as an employment or confidentiality agreement.

"Killself" and other unconstructive replies:

Unconstructive, asinine replies such as "killself," even if meant in jest, are low-content, forum-clogging crap and will get you banned. People who struck out at OCI are in a tight spot, and if they're posting here for assistance, that's what they should get. At the very least, ridicule and the like belongs in the Lounge (see generally, BP).

The moderators are not asking you to blow sunshine up anyone's backside, but if your posting doesn't add something to the discussion, expect to be banned, the length of which ban will be entirely dependent on the opinion of the banning moderator. If you have to ask whether your comment adds something constructive to the thread, then it doesn't.

On the other hand, if someone is posting "killself" or similar nonsense, do not clog up still more space backseat moderating. Use the Report button and let a moderator handle it. Continued debate about such policies will be treated as thread derailment.

In response to community feedback, I've updated and clarified the anonymous posting rules above to reflect the moderating team's latest discussions. The new language is in red; the old language has been struck out. In general, the revisions loosen the anonymous posting rules to permit anon use in a greater number of situations. Notably, the old rules only permitted anon use for posts containing personal information that might identify posters to future employers. The new rules permit anon use more broadly: In addition to allowing anon use for posts containing personal information, anon use is also now permitted for posts containing nonpublic information. Further, the new rules eliminate the old rules' focus on future employers, recognizing that posters may have other reasons for wishing to post anonymously.

We understand that the old anonymous posting rules were not always enforced consistently across different posters. Going forward, the moderating team will strive to apply the same standards to all posters.